Goethe's Residences in Weimar

Last week we also visited Goethe's residences in Weimar. He lived in this huge house in the city but he also had a residence out in the country. We walked from his home in the center of Weimar to his home in a secluded area that is now a park as big as Central Park in New York. As we climbed up and down steps to get to this lovely home, our ears were greeted with beautiful violin melodies played by individual musicians along the way.

Goethe's country home remined me of a French Impressionistic painting. Part of it can be seen in the photo above. The house sat high on a hill with an array of seasonal flowers surrounding it. The small wooden fence on one side was covered by the tall shrubbery that hid the amazing palette of colors until you happened to walk up the stone steps to the house. It definitely was a stunning surprise.

From the research that I did on Goethe before I left and the commentary of some of our guides I got the impression that Goethe was really "full of himself". They of course, never used those words, but the description of his demeanor and his feelings toward other contemporaries made me come to that conclusion.

During our time in Weimar I found out that Goethe actually worked in the Anna Amalia Library. He was a very inquisitive and creative individual. Besides writing Faust, poetry, and other works, he also dabbled in drawing and collected an assortment of objects including bones from dead animals to study. Because of Goethe and the Anna Amalia Library, this picturesque town became a very important city in the 1870's.

One last item about Goethe's country residence ... the park sourrounding it has 85 different types of trees of which only 30 are native to the area. Many of the trees were imported from the United States including the tree which stumped native Germans for many years until a Japanese tourist told them that it was the Kentucky coffee tree. If my memory serves me correctly, that tree is the unofficial state tree of our neighbor, Kentucky.

When we are in Frankfort on Thursday we will visit the home where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born into a family of privilege and wealth. Can't wait to see where this literary genius was born!